Unbridled Vengeance

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The inappropriateness of it all — interrupting a family brunch on New Year’s Day, the forced familiarity with a man they’d never met, even though they wouldn’t realize the unusual circumstances of last night’s deaths . . . Caleb held his breath and watched to see how Sir John would respond.

He’s been told the knighthood Sir John inherited had originally been bestowed on a forebear — his father or grandfather, he wasn’t sure — a sea captain who’d been honored by a young Queen Victoria when he rescued a British diplomat from certain death at the hands of rioting townsmen during one of the Opium Wars. Watching Sir John’s implacable face as he stared down the intruder, Caleb could quite believe the same ice-cold resolve ran in his veins. No wonder behind his back they called him the Black Knight. His hawkish eyes were two points of icy shards.

“Mr. Le Blanc, I am quite certain we have never met before, and nor will we be meeting today. I really wouldn’t care if you were an envoy from the Archangel Gabriel. Now is not the time, nor the place.”

Le Blanc cast his gaze around the room, hardly discouraged from his original intention by Russell’s blunt refusal. “Ah, Mr. Laurent. There you are.” He swiveled back to Sir John. “Mr. Laurent and I have had a number of meetings discussing your affairs here at the winery, and I’m confident I have some very attractive proposals to lay before you.”

Aristide jumped up, his face dark. “I protest! That’s a blatant misrepresentation.”

Sir John raised a placating hand, almost as if conferring a benediction. “Don’t worry, Aristide, I see how the land lies. Will you be kind enough to show these gentlemen out?” He turned to Le Blanc. “Mr. Le Blanc, I am confident I will not be in the least interested in anything you might have to offer me. Now please, be on your way.”

Le Blanc settled a strangely venomous look on Madeleine, who had moved to stand protectively beside George’s pram. He then braced his shoulders, bowed to the room and followed Aristide out.

A shocked silence followed. Graysie had drawn Minette against her chest during the exchange and was stroking her head soothingly. She shot Sir John a grateful smile, and the quiet hum of chatter rose again.

Sir John’s shoulders relaxed forward and he gave a wry grin. “Well, that was a bit of a rum old scene, wasn’t it? See how these sharks work?”

He turned to Caleb, black brows raised in mock innocence, and Caleb chuckled in response. Aristide returned, carrying with him an anxious nettled air, and the conversation drifted onto other things, but Caleb wasn’t really listening. He was watching Madeleine. She had sunk into a chair beside George with a despairing sigh. She caught his eye and lifted her shoulders, smiling. But if she was striving to play her bright animated self, she was failing miserably, Caleb thought. Deep lines had formed around her eyes. She had the distracted air of someone whose mind was miles away. The tilt of her head was tense, her eyes wary. She shrugged wordlessly as if to mime “What? It’s nothing.”

He made his way around the table and sank into the empty chair beside her. “Are you all right, Mme. Laurent? You’re very pale.” Pale except for the dark rings under your eyes.

“Perfectly fine, thank you, Mr. Stewart. Just a little tired.” Her voice was breathy, clipped, and drained of the joie de vivre that had been so evident earlier. She rose abruptly, gathering her skirts around her. “I am sorry, but I really do need to be excused. I didn’t sleep well. I’m afraid I’ve quite run out of steam.”

She gave him an apologetic smile and moved smoothly toward Graysie. Caleb watched as she offered to take Minette off to amuse her.

“I’ll read her a story or she can play with the doll’s house.”

Graysie shook her head and hugged the child closer to her, saying, “Don’t worry, I’d like to keep her with me today. I’ll look after it.”

She kissed the top of her head as if bestowing protection.

Madeleine moved to the hall, aquamarine eyes flicking in Caleb’s direction as she left the room.

He sat, absorbing the charged uncertainty that lingered on from Le Blanc’s intrusion. Madeleine Laurent had sustained a shock that had quite knocked her off her perch, and he’d hazard a guess it was related to the French visitors.

He had an uneasy sense of unfinished business. Who was this Le Blanc, and where was he last night? The unwelcome image of Rory’s raw branded chest, of Miguel’s tortured face, rose before him. If the Frenchman had anything to do with their deaths, then he was the very devil. And if Le Blanc was responsible, he, Caleb Stewart, was going to see that he swung for it.

Nathan Russell gazed at his wife’s back as she sat at the dressing table brushing her hair in rhythmic strokes, her gaze fixed on the mirror in front of her.

“What do you mean, you’ve seen Minette’s father? When? I thought you said he had no interest in the child.”

The lamplight caught the glint of red in her gold hair, and the brush crackled with energy as she drew it across her scalp in a steady rhythm. She was avoiding answering him, even though his breath misted her mirror as he leaned in to kiss the back of her neck.

She still didn’t turn to face him when he sat at the end of their bed, but her emerald eyes flickered back at him through the glass. Her voice was low and slow, the intonation flat and bored, but he wasn’t fooled.

“This morning. He was one of those dreadful men who disrupted breakfast.”

Nathan fell back on his elbows. The bed was soft and welcoming. “You’ve known this since breakfast, and you’re only mentioning it now?” His tone came out sharper that he intended, but it beggared belief that she would have kept something like this from him for even an hour. “Didn’t you think I might have liked to have known sooner? Like immediately?”

She turned to him then, her face crumpled in anxious lines, all pretense gone. “Oh, Nathan, I know you adore her. You’re the only father she’s ever known. Of course you have a right. But I got such a shock. It’s taken me all afternoon to get to grips . . .”

She got up from the stool and joined him on the end of the bed, clasping his hand in hers, her arm warm on his thigh. “At first I was so shocked I couldn’t believe my eyes. I only met him a few times. He disappeared from Francine’s life about the time Minette was born. He was never home, always out gambling. But it was definitely him. I had time to study him while all the other palaver was going on.”

“Do you think he remembered you?”

“I’m really not sure. Probably not. He gave no sign of it. Didn’t even look at me as far as I could tell.”

“And Minette?”

“She’d have no idea. As I say, he disappeared around the time she was born.”

Nathan drew his arm consolingly around Graysie’s shoulder. “You’ll get cold out here. Let’s get into bed.”

They drew the quilt up around them and sat side by side, knees up, backs braced on the headboard, strangely silent.

They had been married for nearly two years. Their adored baby son George slept peacefully in a bassinet next door, but they were already a family before George made it four. Graysie had given up a rising singing career to fulfil a vow she made to her best friend to care for the tot when her mother died in a gambling hall fire. Nathan had fallen under Minette’s spell at their first meeting — certainly long before he fell in love with her feisty guardian.

“She’s our darling girl,” he mused, stroking Graysie’s arm as he thought back over all the precious moments they’d shared, recalled the squirming, surprising solidity of her cuddly little body, smelling of fresh peaches, snuggled up listening to one of Graysie’s bedtime lullabies. “I won’t let anything happen to her.”

Graysie gave him a light kiss on the cheek. “I know, darling. Nor me, either. We just have to work out how we are going to manage this situation.”

“If he doesn’t know who Minette is already, is it inevitable he will find out?” Nathan asked. “And if he does, how is he likely to try and use that information? Blackmail? Extortion? What?”

The violet-flecked eyes he’d always found so disconcertingly honest turned on him. “It’s clear he doesn’t care one whit about his daughter. But he’s certain to try and use her to his advantage if — when — he realizes we’re vulnerable.” She sighed. “I’ve spent all afternoon trying to think how best we can protect Minette. But I’ve come to the reluctant conclusion I really don’t have a clue what to expect next.”

Madeleine Laurent lay in a fetal curl, her knees up to her chest, swallowing down hard on her stomach’s churning bilious waves. She squeezed her eyes tight, hoping she could banish the calamity of Philippe Coubert’s reappearance. She wanted to make him vanish in the same way Aladdin had conjured something up, in a puff of smoke.

Because that’s who he was. Philippe Coubert. Not Gérard whoever. Philippe Coubert. The man she’d once been married to and who she’d long believed was dead.

She smiled grimly. How did the old proverb go? “De court plaisir, long repentir.” Short pleasure, long repentance. Clever Englishmen from Shakespeare to Lord Byron had stolen that phrase, turned it into something more colorful: “Marry in haste, repent at leisure.” And she was surely going to be counting the cost of those ill-fated nuptials for even longer than she’d thought.

When Coubert ran out on her eight years ago, she never expected to lay eyes on him again. Rumor had it he’d fled to the Americas. North, south, east, or west, she hadn’t known where and she didn’t care.

In the years since, she’d not heard one word from him and had long imagined — hoped, even — that he’d died of tropical fever or from an infected monkey bite, drowned at sea, or been eaten by alligators. She smiled grimly. There were so many ways he could have died.

She supposed she shouldn’t have been surprised he’d lived on under a different name. After all, he was wanted for murder.

She hugged herself for a comfort she failed to find and recalled the day her twice-widowed mother had made her heartfelt appeal, not long after she’d returned home from a teaching job in another town: “Don’t be like Francine, please, Madeleine, chasing after love. You’re my sensible daughter. You’re my only hope.”

Her younger sister Francine had eloped at eighteen with the dashing son of a famous circus family and vanished from their lives.

Madeleine had told herself that marriage was a contract, that the idea of romance was a troubadour’s fable, that two mature people with good intentions had every chance of creating a civil and stable union. There was evidence for that all around her, wasn’t there?

So when Philippe Coubert, the powerful and handsome controller of the local wine cooperative, offered for her hand, she’d considered herself fortunate. He was strong, articulate, attractive . . . So what if they weren’t exactly tombé amoureux?

What she hadn’t anticipated was the sadistic, jealous bully he turned into almost as soon as he put a ring on her finger. She was grateful they’d never conceived a child during the months they were together, although having a prospering family had once been one of her most cherished dreams.

When he brutally murdered a man who was challenging him for the leadership of the wine cooperative and had to flee, she’d refused to accompany him. She wasn’t going to be a fugitive for life, tethered to an abusive husband. She’d carried on, the spinster schoolteacher, caring for her aged and ailing mother. Marrying again was out of the question: she wasn’t divorced, she had no death certificate to prove widowhood and no money to fund an annulment. She’d reverted to her maiden name of Laurent, but she knew in the eyes of the village she would always be “the murderer’s wife.”

The faint keening cry of a coyote pierced her misery, and she clenched her jaw to hold back the tears. She didn’t deserve the luxury of crying. She’d so hoped this sojourn in California might be a new beginning, and her reunion with Aristide had been so promising. She loved being able to “play house” for him and the Russell clan, even if it was all just temporary. It had been so long since she had any sense of being part of a wider family.